Tuesday, January 1, 2013

About the Project

This is a Canadian-funded partnership development project
to examine the use of low-cost information and communication technologies (ICTs)
for knowledge mobilization among agricultural communities of practice. The primary
purpose of the project is to establish and support the activities of an emerging
international and multi-organizational research partnership with the broad goal of
enhancing capacity for local innovation through appropriate and sustainable ICTs.
To this end, the project partners are working together to develop a set of case
studies that will examine how academic institutions, government agencies and
international organizations can work with local communities to enhance knowledge
mobilization for sustainable farming practices using low-cost, widely accessible
information and communication technologies such as mobile phones and radio
broadcasting. Partnership development activities will take place in three phases between
2012 and 2015. The first phase of the project centres on a set of core activities
intended to establish working relationships among partner organizations and
to establish a work plan for achieving the mid and long term objectives of the
partnership. A set of case studies identified during the initial phase of the project will provide
the basis for an Integrated Action Research Strategy based on a community of
practice framework. This approach begins with a collaborative study to explore the
social practices that communities engage in with respect to knowledge mobilization
for sustainable agriculture. The initial study will specify a methodological framework
and research instruments to develop qualitative descriptions of agricultural
communities of practice in order to suggest areas where low-cost ICTs might
be introduced to enhance knowledge mobilization both in terms of expert and
indigenous knowledge. A rapid prototyping method will be developed and
introduced to support the implementation and assessment of a small set of short
duration pilot projects to test ICT enhancement ideas. Results from the pilot projects
will, in turn, provide a basis for further discussion of the impact of ICTs on the social
practices of knowledge mobilization within the communities and possibilities for local
innovation. The third phase of the project will reflect on and critique findings from the
integrated action research study. The partners will work together to propose a
model for ICT-enhanced knowledge mobilization that integrates local communities
of practice in partnership with local university, government, and non-government
partners; in relation to this, the partnership will also develop a training strategy
to transfer capabilities to local communities to enable rapid implementation and
evaluation of ICT-enhanced services to address emergent needs and knowledge
acquired of local agricultural communities of practices. The third phase will also
focus on the development of an ongoing and expanded partnership arrangement
with a longer term research agenda. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.